Legally Kidnapped

Sunday, July 31, 2016

Judge Thomas J. Munley placed too much emphasis on the biological tie between the maternal grandmother and the girl, who at 3 months old was blinded after someone put a cleaning product in her eyes, the court said. It overturned his ruling that ordered the child be returned to the grandmother and directed the now 4-year-old girl remain with the foster parents who cared for her since she was 6 months old. Neither the foster parents nor biological mother or grandmother are identified by name in the ruling.

Hundreds of people rallied in cities across Australia calling for fundamental change over the treatment of children being held in juvenile detention centres. Protesters gathered to express shock and outrage at footage aired by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) which showed children being abused whilst in custody.

Laura Lyons is a 48-year-old Wiradjuri woman living in Sydney. She alleges that three of her children as well as four of her grandchildren have been stolen from her by the Australian government. Laura is a member of Grandmothers Against Removal (GMAR), a group of grandmothers who are fighting to get their stolen children and grandchildren back. This is Laura’s story in her own words as told to Camille Nakhid.

I had always been a good student, getting A’s and B’s, but everything changed in tenth grade when I failed English, one of my favorite classes. Although we were reading books I had read before and loved, like Brave New World, I couldn’t stay awake to participate in class discussions. In fact, I could barely keep my head up.

The mother of a then-8-year-old girl, who was sexually abused under the care of her foster father for two years, stayed calm as she unleashed a flurry of angry words at the defendant during sentencing Wednesday morning at Santa Maria Superior Court.

Judges at the supreme court have ruled that the Scottish government’s controversial “named person” scheme risks breaching rights to privacy and a family life under the european convention on human rights, and thus over-reaches the legislative competence of the Holyrood parliament.

The New Jersey Supreme Court unanimously recognized a right to free legal representation for low-income parents challenging private adoptions of their children. This Supreme Court decision found for the first time in New Jersey that low-income parents have a right to counsel in proceedings to end parental rights, even when the adoption is initiated by a private party.

Auditors released a scathing review of the state’s foster care system Wednesday, revealing that the Department for Children and Families doesn’t check the backgrounds of people in foster homes as often as needed, doesn’t ensure monthly in-person visits take place, and grants nearly all requests for exceptions to rules governing foster homes.

Some Kansas Democrats want the head of the Department for Children and Families to resign. It comes after a new government report issued Wednesday uncovered several problems with the state's foster care system.

An audit released Wednesday accused the Kansas Department for Children and Families of failing in many cases to protect the safety of children in the state's foster care and adoption programs, prompting two House Democrats to call for the immediate resignation of DCF Secretary Phyllis Gilmore.

Why are so many parents in Norway claiming that the state is kidnapping their children? With a spike in cases in recent years and accusations of racial intolerance, Dateline asks whether these children are being saved, or stolen.

The state Supreme Court ruled Tuesday in favor of an indigent mother who left her daughter in foster care in 2012 and then wound up in court nearly two years later, without an attorney, losing her parental rights and her child.

Despite a caseworker’s lawsuit against the Indiana Department of Child Services, her employer says she’s right: There aren’t enough caseworkers to handle the exploding growth in cases of Indiana children and families in crisis. But that’s where the agreement ends.

The four children of Michael Wartena and Tiffany Stewart, whose daughter was found drowned behind the La Kiva Hotel on Wednesday, were returned to their parents Monday after Child Protective Services said their decision to take custody of the children was based on what police initially told them.

Less than 24 hours after state child welfare workers were warned of the risks of suddenly relocating a 16-year-old foster care child with severe medical and psychological problems to a new home, the girl was hospitalized, and her former caretakers fear for her health.

All three branches of the federal government and every state have failed to meet minimum standards to protect abused and neglected children, according to a report issued Tuesday that lambasted the American child-welfare system.

An Overland Park man says Daqon Sipple`s life didn`t have to end up with him answering to charges that include assault on a law enforcement officer. At one point, he made it out of his environment, with all its temptations and challenges and had a real chance to do great things in the world, according to his former foster father.

Three years later, Mary Sweeney hasn’t stopped thinking about how close she believed she was to getting her 2-year-old daughter Alex back. Sweeney told a judge she had left her abusive boyfriend, remained drug-and seizure-free for months, and complied with orders to go to parenting classes and therapy.

A Florida sheriff’s deputy seized a man’s phone without a warrant after arriving with Department of Children and Families workers to seize a woman’s children, who were also apparently seized without a warrant.

The horror of the system known as Child Protective Services is never far from my mind. But it came to the fore when news reports detailed how the Department of Social Services tried to quietly insert language into a budget bill to protect the “system” at the cost of the children it claims to serve.

“Let me tell you a little about me, my case originally started due to a domestic violence phone call,” she recently told a few women gathered in a room for a pre-assessment group at Terros, a Valley healthcare organization that offers primary care, as well as substance use treatment.

Children who are re-homed can face many unknown dangers. In the most high-profile case, an Arkansas State Representative re-homed two of his female children adopted from Haiti to a man who later sexually assaulted one of the girls, who was 6-years-old at the time. Children identified in the Reuters report have gone missing. Others have lived to tell of heartbreaking abuse.

The Irish Examiner understands the report into the HSE’s reaction to claims officials covered-up how a woman with severe intellectual disabilities was left at an abusive home is due to be handed to Disabilities Minister Finian McGrath in the next 48 hours.

A new report commissioned by state child welfare officials reveals systemic breakdowns and deficiencies threatening the safety of children placed at Allendale Association, a north suburban residential facility where a teen died earlier this year.

As the South Carolina Department of Social Services announced an increase in child neglect and abuse-related fatalities, attorneys shared details of a lawsuit filed against the agency in the death of a 1-year-old boy.

A caseworker for a Kansas foster care and family preservation contractor sexually harassed and coerced a mother seeking to regain custody of her children, forcing her to send him sexually-charged messages and photos, a new federal lawsuit alleges.

Recent Case: Marijuana use under the level of chemical dependency not grounds for termination of parental rights

Father appeals from the judgment terminating his parental rights. Grounds for termination of parental rights require clear and convincing evidence, so Court of Appeals examines evidence contrary to judgment. Grounds include abuse or neglect and failure to rectify. In this case there was not substantial evidence to support the trial court’s finding that Father’s marijuana use constituted a “chemical dependency” as defined in Section 211.447.5(2)(b) or Section 211.447.5(3)(d). Therefore, that condition cannot support termination on grounds of either abuse and neglect or failure to rectify.

Years of painstaking reforms have gone into California’s foster care system. One of the major victories of this reform has been the California Continuum of Care act, enacted in October 2015 to increase standards of care for foster children, add support for their caregivers, and reduce the number of children held in group home placements.

Air mattresses placed on office floors served as make-do sleeping quarters for dozens of Hillsborough County foster children, a crisis that the contractor responsible for taking care of the children repeatedly failed to report to the state.

A judge has rejected arguments to dismiss charges against two former Los Angeles County social workers and their supervisors, charged with child abuse and falsifying records that resulted from the death of an 8-year-old Palmdale boy.

In the past two years, Georgia’s Department of Family and Children Services, DFCS, has spent more than $3 million to catch up on past-due investigations and received millions more to hire 625 new caseworkers.

An Armstrong County child protection agency has cleared Leechburg Area School District administrators and one teacher of any wrongdoing related to reporting accusations that a substitute teacher inappropriately touched female students, Channel 11’s news exchange partners at TribLIVE reported.

Sunday, July 17, 2016

In her pledge last summer to reform the troubled Department of Children, Youth and Families, Governor Raimondo described Rhode Island's child-welfare system, including state foster care, as "extremely dysfunctional."

Thursday, July 14, 2016

Kenneth and Colleen Shults are hoping to formally adopt a foster child into their family, but in a federal suit filed this week, they are claiming they would be forced to give up their Second Amendment rights to do so.

Maine Department of Health and Human Services Commissioner Mary Mayhew and local foster parents gathered Thursday at Adoptive and Foster Families of Maine on Main Street to encourage more families to open their homes to children in need.

In the world of policy, decision makers try to balance the needs of various constituencies to drive toward incremental change. Reform efforts that start with the best of intentions can have unintended consequences, often for the very people they are trying to help. However, when we know what the consequences are before legislation is passed, we can follow the cardinal rule of any intervention: First, do no harm.

Wednesday, July 13, 2016

While they were assistant coaches at Penn State, Ohio State defensive coordinator Greg Schiano and UCLA defensive coordinator Tom Bradley knew as early as the early 1990s that Jerry Sandusky was sexually abusing young boys, according to testimony unsealed by a Philadelphia court on Tuesday.

Two Texas House hearings have been held to address nightmares with the Texas Child Protective Services agency. During one of those hearings, a state representative who was chairman of the committee, angrily shut-out a discussion of the due process and other constitutional rights of parents.

Tuesday, July 12, 2016

As a pediatrician working with atÂ­-risk families and children in foster care in east Texas, I am increasingly concerned about the inconsistencies in the care they receive and the resources available to them. Our state's child welfare system is broken, as revealed by the recent high-Â­profile death of fourÂ­-yearÂ­-old Leiliana Wright, whose overburdened case worker was unable to visit her in Grand Prairie for 36 days, which was too late to save her life.

Texas' top protective services official and two members of a foster care advisory panel on Tuesday warned that a bill under consideration by the U.S. Senate could worsen the state's already worrisome shortage of foster care beds.

The Andrews government has ordered a "full review" of security breaches in Victoria's child protection system after social workers gave a violent criminal the address of children removed from his care for their own safety.

Monday, July 11, 2016

South Carolina has recently taken hopeful steps toward ensuring the safety of foster children, as a result of a class-action lawsuit won by 11 young plaintiffs. Such measures include placing more children in foster homes rather than institutions and giving them better medical care.

A father jailed for violently attacking his sons was accidentally handed a confidential court report by Victoria's child protection agency containing the exact location of the other children removed from his care due to abuse and neglect.

Saturday, July 09, 2016

The foster parents of a 6-year-old Native American girl pledged Friday to take their fight to keep her to the state Supreme Court after a lower court ruled that the child was to live with extended family in Utah.

A Juvenile Court judge is holding the Department of Child Safety in contempt for ignoring three orders in a child's case, reflecting frustration with the agency's follow-through on efforts to help families.

8 on Your Side is learning more about the conditions of kids sleeping in offices in Hillsborough County. A former case manager who quit her job in the past month spoke to 8 On Your Side about her experience.

A couple of weeks ago, the group’s Facebook page contained the following post: “10 year old boy… spent the night in the office with two staff last night. For the past two days he’s been sitting in a DHS office waiting to find out where he’ll go next.”

Del Norte County’s Department of Health and Human Services is a house divided — underfunded, understaffed with clients “falling through the cracks” to create a “near epidemic rate” of child abuse and neglect cases, according to the latest Grand Jury report.

Wednesday, July 06, 2016

A year after her infant son was thrown off the Arrigoni Bridge and into the Connecticut River, the mother of Aaden Moreno has filed two separate claims totaling $15 million against the state Department of Children and Families.

A leading advocate for the welfare of First Nations children and families says she'll have little faith in the upcoming inquiry on murdered and missing indigenous women unless a funding gap is closed first.

The Children’s Act of 1997 describes a child as a person below the age of 18 years. A child is entitled to education and guidance, immunisation, adequate diet, clothing, shelter and medical attention. The Act makes mention of child protection from discrimination, violence, abuse and neglect and also caters for ‘a probation and social welfare officer’ and a minister to approve homes for children.

Tuesday, July 05, 2016

Where's my daddy? Children who were born of sperm donors and raised by single moms ask about their fathers from as young as aged three. The major study is the first to analyze the emotions of sperm-donor kids.

The Alexandra cluster of Social Development is looking for the father of Siyathemba Makhubalo, born on 7 January 1999; and Caroline Ziphokazi Makhubalo, born on 7 May 2006, are both looking for their unknown father/fathers. The late mother of the children was Sindiswa Mildred Makhubalo.

A foster father who had allegedly sexually abused his wife's 15-year-old daughter for one year and two months by keeping a firearm and a sword to frighten her to subjugation while the mother was employed abroad, was arrested by Puttalam Police along with the firearm and the sword yesterday.

When Chellie Heckman’s husband hadn’t come home from work on time as a supervisor with the Department of Family and Children Services, she was curious about what he was up to at his office. She was absolutely floored at what she found him in the middle of that he was in no rush to stop anytime before being discovered there.

The Utah Supreme Court has given an unwed father another chance to contest the adoption of his daughter, ruling that a notice telling the man what he needed to do to preserve his parental rights did not include required information.

Sunday, July 03, 2016

Average caseloads for child welfare workers in Louisiana have inched up over the past decade, as budget cuts and attrition have thinned the ranks at the agency. But the averages, already at or above nationally accepted standards, don’t paint a full picture of just how thinly stretched the agency really is: High turnover at the department means a large proportion of the staff is new hires, who work a strictly limited number of cases during their first six months on the job.

San Bernardino County’s child welfare system is rife with systemic failures, including shoddy documentation practices, a communication breakdown between social workers and law enforcement that thwarts child abuse investigations, and a reluctance by social workers to remove children from abusive homes, according to grand jury findings.

Sophie Flanagan is 21 this month. “I’ve been in residential care. I’ve been in care with families. I’ve been in care with my auntie,” she says. “I’ve been in many care systems. I’ve been to six different schools and had 25 social workers while I’ve been in care. It’s a terrible system.”

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